


something so flawed and free

by hooksandheroics



Series: for the elusive feeling of intimacy [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Life-Affirming Sex, Smut, Spies Have Lots of Feelings, The Bali Mission, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: There's no bullet in this world he's not going to take for her, which is starting to become a problem.





	something so flawed and free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyfriday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfriday/gifts).



When they report this to the director, Scott would say he was listening to the comms intently.

There’s a bar by the window overlooking the long stretch of a white sand beach, and there’s a woman in green sipping something bright and fruity from a tall glass. She’s smiling at him and he can’t help but smile back.

Tessa Virtue’s color is the vivid green that spans the forests of northern Canada, bird’s eye view in spring, and she looks stunning in satin. She shines in the sunset of Indonesia through the glass walls of the ballroom even amongst the most elite in the tech business. The princess of Saudi Arabia is here and she doesn’t hold a candle to the gleam of danger in his partner’s eyes.

“I can’t see your face but I just wanna say,” Javi mumbles into their comms, “please stop eye-fucking. It’s disgusting.”

Scott conceals a cough behind his sleeve and turns to his drink, effectively turning away from Tessa. “I’m scoping the area.”

“Is that your new name for Tessa?” Scott has never wanted to punch a tech specialist so bad. “Last time, it was a ‘sticky situation you surprisingly found yourself in’ when we were packing up in Sudan.”

“You have three days before we meet at rendezvous, make ‘em count,” Scott says. “Because they will be your last.”

 _“Boys,”_ Tess interjects. _“Play nice. The queen is here.”_

Scott turns around just in time to glance the dancefloor parting as the technological conglomerate boss makes her way towards the center of the room. Verdin Wang greets the elites and socialites with a small nod and a tight smile, and when she reaches her spotlight, the room hushes into a delicate silence. So silent that Scott feared for a moment that Javi could be heard complaining in their ears about the stench of the males’ third floor bathroom.

“Did you know that Ms. Wang here has never taken public transportation ever in her life?” Javi muses amidst the intense clacking of his keyboard. “She also hates dogs. Evil keeps getting more evil.”

“Javi, focus,” Tessa murmurs behind gritted teeth. Scott can just tell that she’s doing it behind a smile. He’s witnessed her do that in person and it’s quite frankly terrifying. “Tell me you have the location of the hard drive.”

“Impatient, impatient,” Javi says, distractedly. “There you go. Sixteenth floor, down the left corridor – oh.”

That’s alarming.

Ms. Wang is now at the podium greeting the guests with her low velvety voice and Scott’s about halfway out of his chair, ready to pounce if they’d been made. Low electricity runs under his skin, crackling with adrenaline.

“Javi?” he checks in.

“Erm, did you bring your lead boots by any chance?” he asks, sounding more and more nervous by the second.

“I’m wearing a _Blahnik_ ,” says Tessa.

“Louboutin,” says Scott.

Javi sighs. “The room is booby-trapped and there are lasers everywhere.”

Music starts up and the whole room breaks into applause just as Scott decides it’s time to stand up and start what they came here to do. He finds his partner taking a delicate sip from her glass and looking up at him with dangerous determination in her eyes. “Can you do something about it?” she asks.

Scott smirks as Tessa saunters over to the middle of the dancefloor with an expression on her face that can ensnare anyone with eyes. No one can ever get in the way of Tessa Virtue’s plans.

Javi hums in thought. “I can, but you will have to be flexible on the schedule. And don’t roll your eyes at me, Agent Virtue. I can’t see you, but I know you’re doing it.”

It’s when they are both in the middle that he sees the slight smile on her lips, the very same smile she has when she’s enjoying something that she thinks is trivial. He can’t help but smile back, taking her hand and pulling her close.

“You have an hour and a half, Fernandez,” she says before switching her comm off. She reaches for his ear, a caress from a distance, a light touch up close, and switches his off, too. Scott can’t help it, he shivers in her arms.

It’s different when she’s so close.

From afar, she glows and takes the atmosphere of the room and transforms it into something she can weaponize. He’s seen her neutralize threats with just a smile and her bare hands, through a scope. Simple and dangerous. But here, like this, Tessa is an enigma.

When she’s not looking at him, she’s scoping the room, counting exits and guards, guests and threats. It’s different because she’s pressed up against him and he can feel her breaths as they move around the floor. And when she moves – there’s a fluidity to the way she moves, a naturalness to the sway with which she sweeps him into.

When they report this to the director, Scott would say that Tessa was doing her job and he was doing his. Just… a little different from hers, but a job all the same.

“What are you doing?” Tessa finally says, her voice rumbling against his chest. Her eyes are back on his with a glint that’s as disarming as the lesser-known fact that she can drink anyone under the table should a challenge be posted towards her. She’s not alcoholic – she’s just really easy to challenge because she knows she can win.

“Inventory.”

She scoffs. “You were looking at _me_.”

“Cataloguing strengths and weaknesses,” he replies simply, knowing she can and will see through his bullshit. “I can present my assessment while we have time, if you want.”

She tilts her head, a prod.

“Three guards in close proximity to the queen,” he continues, pulling her impossibly closer. The kiss he plants to her temple is to whisper all of these into her ear under the guise of intimacy. “All in formal wear, indistinguishable from guests. Means she _knows_ just how coveted her secret is. Twelve other guards, four in every one of the three exits, all of them armed.”

Scott kisses her cheek, gets the corner of her mouth instead. “But you know all of that already, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she breathes, almost imperceptibly, had he not been pressed up close to her.

He smirks against her cheek and pulls away just enough so that he can meet her gaze. “How about this?” he moves his hand to trace up her spine until it rests high on her back. “In your head, you’ve already mapped the way to the fire exit so that you can take out the guards yourself. You’ll let me take the two by the door of the target room if you’re feeling generous.”

She chuckles. “Do you have any protests, then?”

Scott shakes his head. “We both know you’re better at hand-to-hand than me. Ten years of trying to prove the opposite solidifies that. And besides…” he runs a finger at the back of her neck and watches her pupils dilate. “I like watching you take down all these helpless men.”

All of this and Scott’s surprised she allows him to tell her all about the things going on inside her head. For the last ten years of his life with her, he knows without asking that there is a collective agreement going around in the Agency that whatever it is that Agent Virtue’s thinking is a mystery best left unsolved. Either everyone that has tried has met an unpleasant fate or no one’s ever bothered.

In Scott’s defense, ten years is a lot of years to spend with a person and it’s going to get really difficult with not knowing what the other is thinking, so between year one and two, he’s wormed his way into her musings. When she called him ‘annoying’ that first week, he took it with stride because at least he’s not seriously maimed or dead.

Privately, he called that a win, sitting in an underground bunker with two stab wounds and a broken ankle. She was glaring at him from across the small room, sporting a couple flesh wounds and a huge bruise on her forehead herself.

And it’s not like he made this happen – he could never make her do anything she didn’t want to do. So, he’s annoyingly lucky, is what he’s thinking.

“And the weaknesses?” she asks, and he has to take a brief second to get back on track.

He tilts his head and smiles. “With you, there’s none.”

*

With him, though, there is.

And he’d rather die than admit that his weakness is his partner, but when it comes to her, there’s not a bullet in the world he would not take for her. Which is starting to become a problem because his job was to get past the motion-sensing lasers _after_ helping neutralize the guards. Turns out, and also unsurprisingly, these guards are well-armed. Verdin Wang doesn’t hold back either.

The bullet – had it been normal – would have just pierced him and he would still be okay going into the room, but Verdin Wang wouldn’t be a technological legend if she were not thorough with her intention of eradicating her enemies.

It was laced with… something. Scott can’t think about anything else right now but how incredibly painful it is to even breathe, let alone stand. Which leaves Tessa – and Tessa’s plenty capable of taking the remaining three guys down. She would probably take pleasure in knocking out the guy who shot Scott in the leg.

But he can’t see that because his eyes are just so… tired. _Fuck_. He’s dead weight.

There’s blood running down his chin, nasty bruising along his ribs, probably – and this fucking bullet still inside his thigh. He’s going to die.

“Javi,” he slurs into the comm. “Javi, ETA on the hack. Now.”

“Agent Moir, what’s going on?” their tech specialist asks, worry in his tone. They don’t always see eye to eye, but Javi’s a real solid friend. Fuck, if he’s going to die, he would just be grateful knowing the Spaniard is going to take care of Tessa –

“…to abort – please confirm. I don’t like the way his voice is going all drunk and robotic. Agent Virtue, do you copy?”

“I copy – I’m here.”

Yeah, she’s here. Scott can smell her perfume even if his eyes are closed, even if it hurts to breathe. Something obscures the light assaulting his eyelids and it must be her. Yeah, what a way to go. What a way to die.

“You’re not dying,” Tessa whispers, hand on the injured thigh. She sounds breathless and tired. “Can you open your eyes for me. Please, Scott.”

Yeah, when she says it like that, who is he to deny her?

“Hi,” he says, and god what a sight. She’s all banged up and bruised like he is, but she still looks every bit the goddess that she is. Watch out, Verdin Wang, she’s going to fuck you up real good.

Tessa lets out a small laugh as gruff voices sound from the far end of the corridor. “You should go,” Scott urges, taking her hand off from his thigh and handing the gun tucked into his belt to her. “Get the hard drive, get the fuck out of here.”

“And leave you to the wolves?” Scott feels something sharp prick the skin of his right arm – and he belatedly realizes that it’s a boost injection. God she’s such a genius. “No, you’re my partner. I go where you go.”

“Death is not something you can follow me to.”

Yes, Scott knows that’s the most wrong thing to say to Tessa Virtue, his partner of ten years. She has this intense, very fierce need to maintain this one thing that she has with him – and he’s lucky. That’s the bottom line here. Her file says she’s never had a partner last more than three years, and the last one that looked promising had ended with her in a ditch in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter, and her partner bleeding out in front of her for a day and a half before they were retrieved.

He just doesn’t want Tessa to relive that memory again, this time with him. He would rather she leave him and keep that perfect success rate streak.

But she’s nothing if not stubborn.

“Shut up, idiot,” she says, effectively cutting off any argument he still has in him. That he cannot make anyway because he’s slowly drifting away again. “Stay with me, Scott. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“The hard drive.”

“Fuck the hard drive.”

He frowns. “That’s a million people in a city dead if you don’t get the thing, Tess. You _know_ that’s more important than a nameless spy.”

He hears her heave a deep sigh, fire a round of shots into the corridor, before pinning him with a severe glare. “Take the gun, defend yourself, and when I come back you better still be breathing.”

Scott nods.

*

To his credit, he manages to empty his cartridge before passing out for good. He must have taken at least half a dozen guys down – and then he’s out. The last thing he remembers before letting the waves of exhaustion take him under, was Javi’s frantic yelling and Tessa going, “parcel secured”, and his last thought was, “oh fuck, thank god”.

He must have been real dead weight. He’s heavier than his partner could probably lift even though through all of their sparring sessions, she could pin him down with the force of her own weight. But with him unconscious – he doubts he could carry her.

Which is why when he comes to and feels the give of the mattress underneath him, he’s puzzled through the muddled haze of his brain.

He could be captured, he thinks without opening his eyes. But he doesn’t feel any restraint around his limbs, none of the tell-tale signs of being kidnapped. Just an uncomfortable headache and the need for water down his parched throat. Besides, if he really were captured, he doesn’t think they would try and keep him comfortable. Unless Verdin Wang is a really kind person. Which, she’s not.

And then voices come floating through his daze.

“…yeah, that’s all code. You can work on it before we get shipped back to home base, right?”

“Si, piece of cake. Go take care of your partner. I’ll be in my room wearing headphones and blasting AC/DC.”

“Javi, he’s injured. We’re not having sex.”

A scoff, and then. “Yeah, well. Another thing to cross off your long list. I don’t wanna risk it, so. Enjoy. And please, don’t break him.”

“Kindly fuck off, Fernandez.”

“Love me that Canadian politeness shining through.”

There’s ambling up the stairs and a definitive slam of a door, and soon, the silence gets to his ears, ringing annoyingly.

He ignores the protest in his muscles and sits up. When he finally opens his eyes, his sight is flooded with the afternoon sunlight. The window is bare and open, but he would reckon they’re too high up any sightline or perhaps too secluded to bother with the blinds. Tessa hates dark places so if there’s any chance they can forego with the blinds, she would.

He’s sitting, bare-chested and in just his boxers, sweating a little bit, and he hurts all over – but most especially in his injured thigh. He lifts the blanket and sees white gauze blotted with blood around his thigh.

“Fuck,” he murmurs and gets reminded by the dryness of his mouth.

“ _Fuck_ is right,” Tessa says as she crosses the threshold into the room in her comfortable tank top and sweatpants. She’s holding a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers and thank god for Tessa Virtue. “Glad you’re doing okay.”

“Am I?” he asks, head throbbing again. “I feel like I died. Did I?”

She shakes her head and sets the things on the bedside table before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “Stop being a baby and take your painkillers.”

He manages to swallow a couple pills and a large swig of water before settling against the headboard, surveying her careful expression.

Scott still doesn’t know how he got here, how he’s still alive, and Tessa doesn’t look like she’s speaking anytime soon with the way she’s playing with the frayed edges of his blanket so –

“The hard drive?” he prods.

“With Javi,” she replies. “He’s trying to crack it as we speak.”

“How long was I out?”

“46 hours.”

He nods.

People in the Agency sometimes forget that Tessa Virtue is a human being. Sometimes Scott thinks she’s also trying to make them forget. In their line of work, letting the human side control the wheel would lead to guilt. Spies don’t need guilt in daylight. Guilt is relived and rehashed during the night in sleeplessness or the nightmares that come with letting themselves succumb to exhaustion.

Nothing in spy-work is ever healthy, which is why the Agency tries so hard to act like there’s a humane side to the job. They set up a therapy room, mandate sessions, and even pay some of them to take vacations away from the chaos.

They’re the good guys, is what Scott tells himself, but even that excuse has worn out a year into the Agency. Before that, he was a hired gun with exceptional eyesight and an impeccable talent to shoot anything – moving or otherwise – from any distance, no matter the situation. He used to kill without remorse because it put food on the table and it lets him travel to the Netherlands to see his nieces and nephews. He would always shrug the guilt away and say this is where he fell, he’s good at it, and it’s too late to back out now.

But Tessa, she was a student and an athlete. Top marks and all.  She has a tragic childhood story, Scott is sure of that, but all he’s ever had the privilege to hear from her was that “daddy didn’t love me, mommy thought I could do it all by myself so I grew up alone”. And yeah, sometimes, that’s all it takes. But he also knows there’s more to it than she’s letting on.

He’s not going to pry. In the decade that he’s spent fighting by her side, he’s learned that Tessa Virtue has a way, and anything that gets in the way of _that_ way is a waste of time. He’s learned that Tessa Virtue has a pace and anything out of the pace is distraction.

When people call her a robot for being so exceptional at her job, Scott would just think about moments like this, when she’s visibly scared of something. Perhaps the world possibly ending with the rise of technology that can manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They just prevented a test-run that could have leveled an entire city. Any living human being is allowed to feel scared that they almost died.

“Hey,” he speaks once he gets his thoughts in order. “We’re all okay.”

Her hand is on his thigh, fingers tracing the bandages. “I know.”

Scott tries to catch her eyes but she’s determinedly averting her gaze. “The world’s not ending. Well, not yet, at least. But we’re always going to be there foiling attempts. You know that, right?”

This time, when she raises her gaze, they’re so impossibly green he’s surprised he’s not just… lost in them.

“Not always,” she says. “And I just got reminded of that two days ago.”

“What –”

“When I almost lost you.”

Oh. Well.

He’s reaching out before he can ask himself if this is one of those times that he’s allowed to touch Tessa in private. But she lets him – she lets his palm touch her cheek so that he can make her look at him again. So that he can assure her that he’s okay and she saved him. When he finds her eyes, there’s a wall there that’s crumbling to the ground.

“You saved me,” he tells her.

“Barely.”

Scott shakes his head. “I’m still alive, that’s what matters.”

“I know,” she replies. “But you didn’t see _you_.”

In a second, he finds himself flashing back to the times he thought he’d lost her. This job has no shortage of moments when they both thought they would die. But it’s different when he’s at a rooftop, looking at the situation through his sniper scope. When she’s down there, engaging. It’s different when he’s miles away from the fight and she’s in the middle of it, when sometimes she disappears behind walls and he can’t see her. A million times he’s wished he was there with her, but he knows his place.

So yes, he gets her.

When she surges forward and stops abruptly, just centimeters from his lips, he gets her. A spy’s greatest downfall are the unknown variables. When it’s something they didn’t see coming, it’s their fault because their job is to know everything. Tessa is a perfectionist, he knows it weighs down on her that she didn’t see the super bullets inside the goons’ guns. Hell, it weighs down on him, too.

She has her fingers in his hair, flexing as if trying to grasp at something in him, and his breathing has quickened, and she hasn’t even _kissed him_ , but he knows that this is how it’s going to go down: they’re going to fuck each other’s brains out because they didn’t die, and tomorrow morning, not a word about it during their flight back home. But he’s fine with that.

Almost a week in Bali – yeah, they’d had sex in their hotel room because it’s sunny and the ocean is pretty, and if it made their cover more realistic, who are they to deny themselves, right?

He watches as she debates it in her head before diving in – kissing him with a force that shocks him to the core.

Her lips are hot and biting and making him lose control faster than all the times they fucked. The hand she has in his hair pulls and angles his head so that she can kiss him better and – by god, the moan that comes out of his mouth is total unbridled desire.

“Tess,” he murmurs when she lets him breathe, her teeth nipping at his throat as she uses her weight to force him to lie down again. “Are you sure – are you –”

He doesn’t even know what he’s asking – he just wants her to say yes, or just – anything. He’s losing his goddamn mind with the way she touches him and it’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.

“Shut up and let me fuck you,” she says into his skin and he shudders, lies down with no hesitation.

Tessa has a way with her body – and this is something he’s clearly spent time thinking about – that is confident and lovely. When she talks with her eyes and asks him with a kiss, there is nothing to do but surrender. Not when he’s surrendered everything in him to her even before they discovered that they fuck each other really well.

He remembers that he’s wearing nothing but his boxers and she’s still fully clothed, so he reaches down towards the hem of her tank and pulls, a needy whine escaping his lips. “Let’s make this even,” he whispers.

She sits up, straddling his rock-hard dick, smirking a little at his indignant grunt, before pulling her tank off her body. And there she sits, topless and glorious, like a vision only heaven can give. And he’s not going there when he dies, so he takes what he can get down here on Earth.

“May I?” he asks, hands already snaking up her body.

She nods and bends over again, pressure against his crotch turning into her rubbing her cunt against his clothed dick. It feels so good, _she_ feels so good that it’s hard to think about anything but making her feel good in return.

One hand caresses her breast while the other one traces a path down her stomach and into her sweatpants, fingertips dangerously close to where she wants him – and this earns him a lovely quiet whimper from her mouth, open against his chest.

She continues undulating against his touch and he gives in, pushing past her underwear and touching her. She’s already wet and he wants to flip her over so that he can eat her out in earnest, taste her and lick her until she’s begging, but she’s still resolute in fucking _him_ , and he’s not one to deny Tessa of anything she wants.

Instead, he pushes two fingers inside her, feels her clench around him, and hears her moan as she bites his lip hard enough to leave the metallic taste of blood. He claims her mouth again, tongue hot and heavy inside her mouth, as he plays with her nipple, rolling it between his fingers, and fucks her with his other hand.

He can already tell just how quick this one’s gonna be – he’s injured and he’s still in pain but Tessa’s reaching inside his boxers to grasp and stroke him as if he needed any prepping. He’s been hard ever since she came into the room.

“Tessa, please,” he stutters, a hand shooting down to stop her. “I’m already close, just –”

“Okay.” She stands to discard her sweatpants and then leans over so that she can pull his boxers down, and when she comes back to bed and traces her lips down his abs and presses a kiss to the head of his cock, he jerks and moans. By god, he’s going to die soon and it would be by her hands and lips.

“Tess – I –”

She hums and he shuts up. “Are you going to make a mess of yourself before I get to fuck you?”

Scott doesn’t even realize that he’s closed his eyes, but when he opens them again, he sees her there, sitting on his stomach, biting her lower lip in a coy smile. “If that’s what you want,” he replies, almost on autopilot. He does what she wants in bed, that’s just how he was made.

Something passes behind her eyes and he’s too far gone to decipher it, so he lets it pass and lets her kiss him once again, this time softly and lingering, a stark contrast to the pace they were going at. “What I want,” she tells him as she lines him up against her entrance, “is to feel you come inside me.”

“Fuck.”

She slides down until he bottoms out and all the air leaves his lungs. For a second, time stops. He listens to their shallow breathing, in sync, and lets his own heartbeat overwhelm his senses. And when she starts moving, it’s nothing short of hard and fast.

He understands it – he knows that they both need to get off because the last two days proved that even weathered spies can get scared as fuck, that Tessa Virtue is a human being, and that no matter how many times he tells himself that they’re fighting the good fight, there would always be a little bit of that voice at the back of his mind that whispers ‘what if you’re not?’ and he’s always going to doubt.

But it’s Tessa with him and if nothing else, she’s there suffering through shit with him and he couldn’t ask for a better partner.

It’s all heat and feeling now, her perfect body in the afternoon sun, so clear and vivid, riding him. It’s going to be hard forgetting what she looks like with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, just _feeling_ , so he commits that to memory and thrusts up into her.

His hands grasp her hips so that he can fuck her better, and it doesn’t matter now that the pain in his thigh is shooting up again. All he can feel is her fluttering around him. He’s so close – at the brink, and she needs to – he needs her to come before him, he needs to watch her lose herself in pleasure.

His thumb presses against her clit and her mouth opens in a loud moan as he circles hard and fast.

And suddenly, she’s coming, calling out his name in an abrupt shout – and that’s enough. He’s coming, too, _hard_. She whimpers at the feeling of his come making her wetter, and she plops down on his chest, breathing hard.

His ears ring, his chest is heaving, and he’s not above admitting that this might just be the best sex they’ve ever had. He feels like he might never come down.

Tessa props herself up on his chest and he smiles. She looks so good.

She smiles back, biting her lip a little as her cheeks take on an adorable shade of pink. It’s nice to see her a little flustered after a good fuck. “That was good.”

He nods. “Take all the credit, I did nothing but lie here.”

She laughs openly and god, that sound. So, blissed out and soft. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah.”

He’d agree to just about anything right now because they’re alive and they can spend the next few hours reaffirming that. Come next morning, it will be another mission and another possibly-world-ending catastrophe to worry about.

So, he takes what he can get. He’s just really annoyingly lucky that he gets _her_.

*

Javi comes downstairs for dinner, takes one look at them moving around the kitchen, and dons a glare and a frown. “I had my music on and loud and I _still_ know you did it.”

Scott shrugs and Tessa smirks.

It’s going to be a long flight home for their friend tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> i've decided to put all my notes down here.
> 
> hi, it's 2:16 am as i'm typing this and i am severely sleep deprived, as always. this is unbeta-ed, not as vague as the one before this, but still a little bit all over the place, so i apologize for any mistake. 
> 
> also, this has a little bit of clintnat in it because spies and all. they're the best example for me so i just knew i had to pull something from the characters and their relationship. it's not entirely a clintnat au so i didn't tag the fic as such, but it's still worth the mention.
> 
> for everybody who requested the bali mission, here yall go!
> 
> this is for tara. i hope she gets enough rest. 
> 
> for idella, for always being so encouraging. kind words go a long way.
> 
> title from movement by hozier.
> 
> leave me a kudos or a comment or both! love those! thank you for reading!


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